The Absin Theory

Tony Absin was unique among all the Sugar Loaf Residents I met. He was brilliant, very well educated, and possessed a powerful imagination. To explain his condition he told this joke, one that everyone in the business has heard, most Residents know by heart, and which I repeat often.

This guy had a flat tire outside an insane asylum. Upon inspection, he found he had no jack. He just stood there because he didn't want to show his frustration since a patient was leaning against the iron fence watching his every move. Finally the patient spoke.

"You know, if you place that big rock close to the car, then use that pole as a fulcrum, you could lift the car easily."

The motorist disregarded the words because what does a nut know? But he was desperate, so finally he went through the motions.

The makeshift method worked. The motorist changed the tire and, after closing his trunk, spoke to the patient in disbelief.

"How in God's name did you ever think of that?"

The patient replied casually, "I might be crazy, but I'm not stupid."

It was Tony's favorite joke, the only one I ever heard him tell. I'm sure he remembered it because it epitomized the man himself. Tony had a bio-chemical imbalance that made him act irresponsibly, yet when he was rational, his brilliance, education, and imagination all showed through perfectly.

When Tony was on he was really on. He could explain the most

complicated legal form so a kindergartner could understand it. But when he was off, he couldn't explain the ABC's to a lawyer. One time he spent the entire morning buried in a book. I think it was one of the German philosophers. Consequently he forgot to take his Meds. As we've seen over and over, this was the single greatest cause of aberrant behavior at Sugar Loaf, and it certainly showed that day. What Tony Absin came out with that afternoon would have made many a philosopher/educator proud. All it did to the illiterates in the facility library was lull them into Med Land.

My brother has been around the academic world all his life. He told me that the single most boring person in the world is the one who has just received his Ph.D. and wants to share all his knowledge and insights with whoever is in front of him and share it all at once. The poor listener couldn't care less. After the general statement and an example or two, he's heard enough and is ready to move onto something else. But the new Ph.D. has no idea how his barrage is being accepted; all he sees is a sounding board to throw out everything he knows. Overshadowed by the immensity of his knowledge, he completely overlooks the needs of the audience and bulldozes on. And this day the audience was a handful of Sugar Loaf Residents.

As I listened to Tony's harangue, I was reminded of my brother's reflection on walking encyclopedias: the man of great knowledge knows more and more about less and less; at the ultimate level, he knows everything about nothing. I will spare you Tony's two-hour monologue by giving you its essence.

Formal, structured education is a waste of everything held dear by mankind: Time, the

human mind, the vigor of youth, and money. The entire approach of education through the years has been wrong. Everything should be thrown out. Do NOT teach children to read, write, and deal with numbers. It's not WHAT people learn that's important. Instead of being liberally educated, people should learn ONE THING only. It doesn't matter what it is: tiddly-winks, how to thread a needle blindfolded, or space rocketry. The key to a REAL education is not content but mastering SOMEthing. By becoming a Master, you know how to concentrate. Once a Master, you can apply your inner-mastery to anything and everything. You can pick up what you need when you need it, not learn everything at once and forget it later. NEVER kill the mind, the innocence, and enthusiasm of youth by teaching it THINGS.

After the two-hours everyone was either asleep or exhausted, even Tony. He'd pontificated so loudly, used up so much energy, and emptied his bag of knowledge (on THAT subject) so completely that he went to his room and slept for twelve hours nonstop. I think everyone else did too.

I was interested enough in Tony's remarks that I put them on an audio cassette and later transcribed them on paper. I was tempted to take the tape to the university education department and let them chew on it. But I had the peculiar feeling that they would have dismissed it immediately

because it came from a Resident of Sugar Loaf. Too many people, even educators, can't accept the meaning under the flat-tire-in-front-of-the-asylum joke.

In time, Tony finally left the facility and opened an alternative school. The irony is that educators who heard of his approach heralded him as a true innovator. I haven't followed the success of his students to see if his theories produced superior people, but no matter. That he put into action one of his ideas made him unique among Residents. Most of them pursued only immediate gratification or a state of perpetual mental numbness. As the saying goes, that's why they were there. And stayed. As for Tony, the Absin Theory became a ticket out.